This is the new snap-on panel for Smapler v0002. It helps keeping the Arduino board, the Smapler shield, and all the wires tidy on a small MDF panel where to plug 4 potentiometers and 2 switches to control volume, distortion and all types of digital effects on your stereo generative sound instrument.

We are going to give away 10 panels to the next 10 buyers of the Smapler-v0002 kit, in the future this panel will be part of our online store.

If you want to get a view about what it is possible to do with this kit, visit this blog post or take a look at this video on youtube:

Back on the road! After 6 months in Nagaland, BlushingBoy is coming back to the workshop scene with 16KB of Sound. This new workshop, to happen at Arteleku/San Sebastian/Spain March 5th-6th, will look into the production of electronic music with only 16KB of memory space for both sound engine and sound data.

The rules of the game are simple. Every participant will get one Arduino board and one Smapler v0002 shield (Singapore Edition). On top of that BlushingBoy will design special control panels -like the one in the picture- to give a physical form to the different instruments.

During the 16 hours of this new intensive workshop, the participants will explore different techniques that go from bit-hop to microsampling. Knobs and buttons will act as simple interfaces to the music machines.

BlushingBoy will introduce his new library for stereo 8-bit sound generation. This code has been explored before at iMAL/Brussels, and SADI-Nabi/Seoul. It comes from the very core of Nagaland and allows funky math operations at the level of byte.

We are not going to unveil the library, yet. But you can explore the physical flyers we made for the event here.

I was working the other night in making possible to play sound from SD cards using Arduino boards. It is basically the code behind the Smaper v0001. I took part of Adafruit's AF_Wave library for Arduino and hacked it for working without the use of a DAC (digital to analog converter) what makes the whole design a little cheaper.

(c) 2009 BlushingBoy, Arduino Color with microSD module

Thanks to the hack I could easily play WAV files by plugging my headphones directly to digital pin 3 on Arduino. Since I didn't have anything else at hand, I used one microSD module from Libelium, but the Smapler v0001 is a better option for a final installation.

You can check the video from youtube here:

I posted the movie to Arduino's blog and the people at Make Magazine echoed it on theirs.

I like to prototype things on Arduino boards, because it goes very quick and is very reliable. But when making a final object for a customer I try to use more specialized modules, adjusted to the situation.

In this case, the Smapler v0001 was made to be hidden inside paintings, since this was the request of our client. It is an Arduino compatible DIY kit including the SD card socket and a simple sound amplifier with a distorsion knob.

If you want to try this out yourself, you can find the library at: http://blushingboy.net/p/SDplayWAV/ and preorder the Smapler v0001. As an alternative we also sell Adafruit's WaveShield that you can use on top of your Arduino board.

BlushingBoy is all for open source, therefore we have created our own project repository where to publish the things we develop in an open way. It is our way to thank for all the bits and pieces of code and design that make our work possible.

We are also starting to host projects from others that we would love to see becoming open source products. If you have an idea don't hesitate contacting us. We are happy to put our experience at your service and -who knows- we may even become partners.

Visit our repository at: www.blushingboy.net